(Almost) Bowled Over

My “can I do it” goal is within sight. Can I navigate an entire bowl season without watching more than “a half” of any one game? By golly I think I can. A tougher challenge would be reciting the names of every fired NFL coach while standing on one foot and holding a lighted match…… Speaking of GREAT books – I found another one (that AgentPierce HAS to read!)…….
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Here’s a fun parlour game for “bowl season” – list the bowls that actually have live fans in their upper decks.

DidYouKnowThat….. the average Texas High School Football Playoff game draws a larger “live gate” than 83% of college bowl games. Heck, the average Texas High School has more members in their marching band than 50% of bowl games “crowds”……

The new standard for “does your school travel well to bowl games” is does your fan caravan contain more SUVs with window flags than the number of players your team suspended during December for “violation of unspecified team rules” aka VOUTR. Incidentally…. our totally unofficial numbers of thug-aletes suspended for VOUTR this past December stands at 46. This season’s VOUTR roster contains not only “a white kid” YIKES, but “a FAMOUS white kid” – Colt McCoy’s kid brother at Texas. So Orangebloods do have something left to brag about.

We applaud the new bowl swag trend. Eschewing the traditional cheap watchs, cheap walkmans and tacky faux velour warm-up suits that had become bowl swag staples, bowls now give “gift cards” to Best Buy. This explains how players who can’t afford bus tickets to go back home for their grandmothers’ funerals CAN sport $200 Dr Dre headphones at their teams pre-game Old Well Walk of Champions thingys. Now you know……

KUDOS to TO’B and Frau !!!
While The Butcher and UNC wage a nasty media-duel over contractural semantics, The Marine and Kay’s sister resolve their contract buy-out issues without acrimony. Tom (along with Smilin’ Jon Tenuta) is headed back to Hoo-ville in the shadow of Monticello. Tom joins fellow former Wuff HFC Mike O’Cain (and UNC’s Bill Dooley and Wake’s AlGroh) in the unique fraternity of former “Big Four” head coaches who end up somewhere in Virginia.

This seems a nice solution for all concerned except neither TO’B nor Smilin’ Jon “recruit” because “recruiting is nastier than a Kardashian sex tape”. Tenuta “doesn’t recruit” because “being the greatest defensive mind since Buddy Ryan” is a full-time job in itself. UVa will save a few dollars by simply reusing AlGroh’s parking sign – Reserved For The Greatest Defensive……. . UVa’s definition for “great defensive mind” is “loses to VaTech by less than three touchdowns”.

Zapping The Marine only costs Frau $200,000 which is chump change these days. UNC spent more than that resolving unpaid parking tickets for Butcher’s “scholar-athletes” (wink, cough). Speaking of NCSU HFCs….. did “Dave Who From Where” set a modern NCAA Bowl Season record for “being an interested spectator at not one but two bowl games where ‘his team’ got beat convincingly”? Does Guinness keep records for that? ……. Did Dave get to go shopping for Dr Dre headphones with either NCSU or “that directional MAC team that FlaState whupped up on”?

Here’s a head scratching math test….. which is greater: (1) the number of NFL head coaches fired on “Black Monday” or (2) the number of NCAA bowl teams that played under a different head coach than they played their last regular season game with?

Is it true? Is Johnny Swofford counting Syracuse and Louisville as ACC Bowl wins? Will he count Notre Dame’s if……

Is the term “interim head coach” now an official occupational category? …… butcher, baker, candlestick maker, baristas, drug mules and interim head coach…. and, of course – “special consultant for the Tampa Bay Bucs”. Ouch!

Is Tommy Tubbeville THE Sleaziest job-jumper in the history of college football? Tommy Tubbs has now “lied to dem boys” at at least three academic institutions (so far). He is now at his fourth “dream job”. Bobby Petrino is a distant second.

Actually Lane Kiffin is in a class by himself as “sleazy football coach”. He looked like the Unibomber at The Sun Bowl. Prediction: Kiffin will eventually bring more NCAA sanctions down on USC than an Escalade full of Reggie Bushs and OJ Mayos.

Now attention turns to ACC Basketball. I still can’t name half of the 15 starters for State, UNC and Duke combined nor do I feel compelled to care. I’m sure Duke still has a few Plumlees, don’t they?

I was with a bunch of adult UNC fans this week. The subject of “Butch” came up as it usually does. The assembled UNCers all agreed that “they” would NOT walk away from $500,000 either simply because UNC admins wrote up a sloppy buy-out contract. And “UNC’s former AD” had a law degree too!

How relevant are “bowl games”? Who can name ECU’s bowl game and/or their opponent without googling? If you can – GET A LIFE! Is there a sadder bunch than “yahoos who pay attention to bowl games”? Yes – “yahoos who get excited about National Signing Day”. FWIW….. there’s a lot of overlap among those two groups of sad yahoos.

That GREAT book I reistened to this week was “Stuff White People Like” by Christian Lander. The title is misleading. It should be “Stuff The Pretentious Faux-Intellectual PC-crowd Likes”. It is a Jeff Foxworthy-esque Redneck book about uber-Liberals. I actually bought a hard copy to give to AgentPierce. He’ll love it, so will many of you.

Other than that, I’m in to John Sandford’s series of Lucas Davenport & Virgil Flowers vs grisly serial killers in Minnesota these days.

Remind me again… which pro league is on strike THIS year – The NHL or the NBA?

Speaking of which….. am I the only one who thinks Andy Reid is really old PGAer Craig Stadler? If Erin Andrews grew a walrus mustache she might look like Craig Stadler too. You know your NFL team is totally irrelevant if neither Andy Reid nor Jon Gruden is rumored to be your next coach.